


nemesis, nemesis

by jediseagull



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: F/M, Kidnapping, QoN-noncompliant, Reconciliation, mostly because there's a six-month wait at the library, oh well, post-TWK
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:55:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21843286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jediseagull/pseuds/jediseagull
Summary: Two months after her exile, the Roach comes to Jude with a request.
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar
Comments: 18
Kudos: 100
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	nemesis, nemesis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mustlovemustypages](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mustlovemustypages/gifts).



> Happy holidays, mustlovemustypages! All of your prompts looked so interesting that I've already added several new shows onto my to-watch list, and I really enjoyed writing for you. I hope you enjoy this too!

Thirty seven days have passed since I was exiled from Faerie. On the good ones, I practice my swordplay, then make Oak practice his. When my muscles start to burn, I think about wrapping my graceless mortal hands around Cardan’s throat and squeezing, and I find the motivation to run the drills one more time.

On the bad days, I go shopping in strip malls and supermarkets armed with nothing more than a bootknife. I feel safe. I shape my mouth around unfamiliar human niceties, and on the worst of these days, they don’t even seem unnatural to me.

I would rather go mad with missing Elfhame than stop caring that it was stolen from me. On the good days, I worry about how I will take my home back. On the bad days, I worry that someday soon, I’ll wake up and think that I _am_ home.

Today is not a good day. By mid-afternoon I’m on the sofa, staring at the black TV screen and wondering if I’ll feel less pathetic if it’s on and I can pretend to be watching it, or more pathetic for being soothed by the nonsense of a make-believe happy ending. When someone knocks at the door, I flinch so hard that I fall off the couch and bang my elbow on the coffee table.

Standing on our threshold, the Roach is even more startlingly ugly than I remember. Two months ago, I was used to the monstrousness of the Folk. Now, I can’t stop looking at his algae skin, a smooth muddy green that stands out against brick and concrete. I know nothing good could have brought him to my door, but seeing him is like taking that first bite of faerie fruit, bright and intoxicating until it is all that fills my thoughts, until I cannot help but crave more despite the danger. The cobweb weave of his tunic makes me think of the glide of spider silk gowns against my skin; the polished leather of his boots makes me wish for my own, undoubtedly claimed by whoever has taken over my old rooms in the palace. I feel myself leaning forward almost against my will, eager in spite of myself.

And then he opens his mouth. 

“The High King has been kidnapped,” he says, and all my eagerness curdles like spoiled milk. “May I come in?”

If I had any kind of sense, I’d have shut the door in his face. Instead I ask, “Cardan?” and want to curse myself for being three kinds of fool as soon as I hear the tone of my own voice. 

“Yes,” the Roach says, and waits.

I pretend to think about it. Not long. Or, I suspect, convincingly. “Okay.” 

As I lead him past the open kitchen to the living room, I falter for a moment, some long-buried etiquette fighting to the surface. “Would you like something to eat? Or drink?” I need to eat more often than either Vivi or Oak, so I know that our fridge currently boasts two packs of Capri Sun, half a carton of leftover pad thai, a bag of oranges, and a selection of expired condiments - but the offer comes out anyways. Oriana would be proud.

The Roach shakes his head, though, and so we keep walking.

“This is a big place.”

“Thanks,” I tell him, although we both know it wasn’t a compliment. Appearances matter little to the Court of Shadows, and the size is impractical on multiple counts.

“Your sister?”

I shrug, trying for casual. “It was that or start killing people for money instead of in self-defense.” Not that I’m bitter, or anything.

The Roach is wise enough not to comment. Instead he perches on the armchair, takes a moment to collect his thoughts, and says, “Two days ago, your father found a way into the palace. His soldiers killed the guards and stole the High King from his chambers. But since they didn’t just slit his throat and leave him with the others, we believe His Majesty is safe. At least until Madoc can convince Grimsen to forge him a new crown, and the land accepts a new ruler.” 

I breathe, in and out. _Forget to breathe and you’ll defeat yourself before your enemy ever gets to you_ , Madoc used to say. He’d smack me in the gut with his scabbard every time he caught me holding my breath. I learned to keep my lungs working through pain and fear and exhaustion and fury. I keep them working now.

“Okay,” I say. “Are you really asking for my help?”

The Roach quirks an eyebrow at me, as though to say, _why else would I be here?_ I glare back. “I’d be more of a risk than an asset in any rescue attempt, and you know it. And that’s assuming I don’t want to kill him myself.” The Roach’s eyebrow stays up, and the other one rises to join it.

”In nearly any plan, you would be,” he concedes. “But…”

Oh, I hate that word. And I hate myself, too, for taking the bait he’s laid out so neatly in front of me. “But?”

“But His Majesty isn’t in Elfhame,” the Roach says. “He’s here.” 

* * *

When Vivi comes home a few hours later with Oak, it takes her less than a second to assess the state I’m in.

“Go play outside,” she tells Oak. “Homework later.”

Oak looks as though he’s thinking about protesting out of sheer stubbornness, but Vivi’s slit pupils narrow and he scampers out the door. Then she turns the same look on me. It’s one that says that she’s my big sister, and what she says, goes.

“Spill,” Vivi orders. “And also maybe sit down before you wear a hole in the carpet.”

I come back to myself enough to recognize the slight ache in the soles of my feet. I’ve been pacing back and forth in the hallway like a tiger in a zoo.

I sit. And then I tell Vivi everything. When I’m done, she looks at me for a long moment, then shakes her head.

“I know.”

“I mean –”

“I _know_ ,” I snap. “It’s stupid! I should just leave him there to rot, but it’s not like it’s any better for me or you or Oak if Madoc becomes High King!”

Vivi has the gall to laugh. “It kind of is, though. He won’t need Oak anymore, if Grimsen can make him his own crown. You think he’d come after us just out of spite? You think he’d come after _you_?”

I switch tactics. “And what about everybody else? Can you imagine Faerie under Madoc’s rule? All your friends, dead or worse in his wars. Humans stolen night after night to be slaves for his armies.”

“Because all the other High Kings and Queens were such pacifists,” she counters. “Admit it, Jude, you just don’t like the idea of him winning because it’d mean _you’ve_ lost.”

She’s right. I don’t like the idea of Madoc winning the crown, any more than I liked the idea of Balekin winning it. Or Queen Orlagh, or Nicasia, or Valerian.

I am Queen of Faerie. It is my land, my throne, and my crown, and by the oath I took, it is mine until I want it to be otherwise.

Until _we_ want it to be otherwise.

“Well,” Vivi says, “I know what I’d do.”

“Laugh in his face and then stab him for good measure?” I say, because ever since she learned what he’d done to me Vivi has made her opinion on Cardan clear, repeatedly and at great length.

Vivi rolls her eyes. “Stab him first and then laugh while he bleeds out, obviously.”

I think about Cardan’s blood, and the way it would shine red on my hands and my face and my clothes. I think about the warmth of his life spilling out across my skin. I know what it feels like, to stab a boy and watch him die.

“Oh,” Vivi says. “Oh, Jude.”

She touches my cheek, tracing the path of a tear.

“I don’t,” I say nonsensically.

“Uh-huh. As much as I think we’d both prefer for that to be true…”

“What do I _do_?” I ask, feeling like a child again. “There are going to be guards, and if they’re Madoc’s, even if they’re new, there’s a good chance they’ll recognize me because of Taryn.”

Vivi’s lips purse, disapproving. She may be as manipulative as Taryn and I, in her own way, but there are times when she reminds me of no one so much as Madoc. If Vivi cares for someone – if they are hers – then nothing, _nothing_ can break that. In the same way that I don’t understand her optimism that Heather will take her back, she doesn’t understand that Taryn and I are broken, possibly beyond repair.

“You’re going to save the High King of Elfhame,” Vivi says. “And then you’re going to let me hit him for you, because if I can’t stab him I can at least give him a black eye that’ll last for days.” She tugs me down the hall towards the bathroom. “But first, you need to get dressed.”

* * *

Regardless of what has happened over the past few months, it is clear that the Court of Shadows is not lacking in spies. I find Cardan exactly where the Roach tells me he’ll be. 

Now that it’s evening, downtown is bustling with people: couples on their way to dinner, men in suits and women in pencil skirts streaming out of offices and into taxis and bars, tourists and locals and the inevitable pigeons all packed into a handful of square miles.

Even in the crowd, it’s not hard to spot the guard. I see the space around him first, the product of a glamour that sends all the other humans weaving around some invisible obstacle. Then the man himself comes into view, and I realize exactly why the Roach needed me.

Madoc has chosen a human soldier, which is unusual in and of itself. There are humans in Faerie, of course, but it’s rare for them to be warriors. Far more common are the mortals chosen for their exceptional talent in one art or another. But if this man is skilled in music or poetry, it’s far from his only ability. He wears an iron sword across his hip, his stance too comfortable for the blade to be just for show, and his muscled frame speaks of a strength I’m not optimistic about beating in a fair fight.

I look up, to the building across the street. A shadow out of place on the top of a rusting fire escape tells me the guard has a partner. They’ve been well-placed; the first guard has his back to a brick building without any windows and faces out onto a wide street. He has a full view of anyone approaching him, a near-constant flow of cars and people obstructing a straight charge, and support from the high ground should he somehow get mobbed anyways. The second, perched on what is almost certainly an iron staircase, is even safer.

I’m not surprised by any of this. The Roach warned me what to expect, and I let the foot traffic move me along the sidewalk without more than the briefest glance at either man.

Then their prisoner comes into view. So does the other reason the Roach came to my door.

The cage is wrought iron, finely made by mortal standards. Built from six rectangles of fencing, it’s been welded together at the corners to form an ornate, inescapable prison. Any Folk trying to free their king would be in so much pain from the iron that they would make an easy target for the first guard – and anyone trying to take him out first would have to contend with the bowman on the roof.

Bound inside the cage, Cardan looks barely conscious. Every motion must be painful, and although the human passerby cannot see him, he makes for a sorry sight. In taking him from Elfhame, Madoc’s men have stripped him of his connection to the land that would have risen to do his bidding. In the mortal world, he cannot command the trees to rip apart the bars that trap him. He cannot glamour the guards, wearing their necklaces of rowan. They have made him powerless.

And they have brought him here, to the one city in the world where his exiled seneschal lives, plotting her revenge. If I am foolish enough to kill in him in a blind rage, then the throne becomes Madoc’s all the quicker.

Even so, I have to grit my teeth against the wash of anger that floods through my veins. Madoc is the better strategist, and the better combatant – but he is not the greater danger. Not to me.

I flow forward with the other pedestrians, closer and closer. Close enough to see the bruises on Cardan’s pale cheek, the ragged strip of cloth stuffed in his mouth. The weave matches the fabric of his shirt, streaked with blood.

And still, nobody tells me to stop. The chemicals Vivi put in my hair have left it the color and texture of sun-bleached straw; the makeup she applied to my face has made my nose narrower, my cheekbones less pronounced. My eyes seem to have darkened three shades under the powder she put on my lids. Of course, the dye doesn’t make my hair gleam like water. The makeup doesn’t make my eyes sparkle with their own starlight, or turn my skin to the shade of fresh snow. I am still ordinary. But ordinariness is its own, very human kind of glamour – and it’s working.

I’m next to the guard now. Past him. He’s alert, scanning for threats, but then, I don’t register as one. I drop to a crouch, hand on my ankle like I’m retying my laces. And then the poisoned blade of my bootknife is out of its sheath and slicing across his leg.

I’m up and walking again before he ever thinks to look down. I hold my pace steady. I breathe.

At the corner, I turn, aim, and throw. The second guard grunts in pain as I vanish into the crowd.

I give the concoction ten minutes to work. By the time I get back from my circle around the block, the guards have disappeared. I hope the Roach hasn’t killed them, but there’s little I can do about it either way now.

What I can do is kneel, reach through the iron bars, and take the gag out of my husband’s mouth.

“Hello, Cardan.”

He shifts, waking, then hisses when the movement presses cold iron against his bare skin. I want to soothe that hurt as much as I want to push him back into the bars, and cause him the same pain he caused me. That feeling intensifies as soon as he lifts his head; even dazed and weak, the curve of his smile is stinging. “Hello, Jude. Are you here to finish what your father started?”

“Maybe,” I say. “Or maybe I’m here to see what you’ll promise me in exchange for letting you go.”

Cardan’s laugh is more air than sound. “That was my next guess. Alas, I’m afraid the Court won’t take your word that I’ve rescinded the order for your exile.”

“That’s okay. I don’t think I wish to be seneschal to so careless a High King. Really,” I say, and try to make my voice as drawling as Locke at his finest. “Getting yourself kidnapped _again_?”

He shrugs, lopsided. One of his shoulders might be dislocated. “I do always seem to get out of it.”

“You haven’t yet. Not this time.”

“I will,” he says, utterly confident. His smile quirks for a moment, and the cut on his lip gapes a bright, bloody red. “After all, you’re here, aren’t you? My Queen.”

I tell myself that he didn’t make me flinch, but then, I am human, and a liar. “I wouldn’t be, if not for you.”

“Lucky for me, then.” 

“Or unlucky. Depending on what I decide to do with you.”

“Now’s your chance,” Cardan says, and bares his throat. “If you want it.”

I raise the knife. Cardan’s eyes stay open, staring straight into mine.

When I bring the hilt down on the cage’s lock, metal collides with a crash. The shackle warps. Another strike, and it snaps apart.

I don’t want it. No matter how much I wish I did.

“Just go,” I say, the words twisting on my tongue. “Take your throne back, or don’t. It doesn’t matter.”

Cardan frowns up at me and doesn’t move. “You don’t want to know why?”

“Why?”

“Why I exiled you.”

“I know why,” I tell him. In my growing frustration, my voice comes out sharper than I expected. “I’ve always known. You wanted revenge for being forced to take the crown. You wanted to rule on your own, without having to share power with some human girl.” _You didn’t want me_ , I don’t say.

“Jude,” Cardan says. “ _I married you_.”

“So that I’d release you from the binding,” I snap. “And then you got rid of me as quickly as possible, didn’t you?”

“Did I?” Cardan asks, soft, and I remember the feel of quilted sheets. The warmth of another body next to mine. “I was angry, Jude. I told you I trusted you – I _did_ trust you – and the next day I find out you killed my brother. I was angry, and I acted accordingly. Whether I would regret the decision later didn’t matter one bit in the moment.”

I remember being so furious with Taryn that I would have run her through if Vivi hadn’t stopped the fight. Would I have regretted that?

Do I regret it still, that my anger over Locke’s games may have turned my sister into the one enemy I didn’t see coming?

I know my own answer. Now I need to know his. “Did you?”

Cardan looks himself up and down, all the scrapes and tears and bruises, and raises his eyebrows. “Obviously it hasn’t worked out as I might have hoped.” 

“Cardan,” I say, and he yields as though he would do anything I asked of him. Maybe he would.

“Sometimes,” he says. “More, as Madoc began to move against me and I looked to my side for someone who wasn’t there. When the person I most wanted to rely upon had left me, and there was no one to blame for it but myself.” And then he exhales, sudden and sharp, and adds, “I hesitated, you know. Your father sent Taryn in first, bloodied like you’d been in a fight, and in the dark - by the time I realized, it was too late.”

If I were a better sister, I would hope that Taryn was a willing participant in this scheme. Selfishly, I wish she wasn’t. I don’t want to be faced with the decision to raise my sword against her again, knowing the consequences. Perhaps I am more like Cardan than I thought. More like Vivi, too. Perhaps we are all more like each other than we choose to acknowledge, humans and Folk, sisters and kings.

I don’t know if it’s enough, but maybe it’s a start.

“Are you still angry?” I ask.

“Are you?”

Yes would be the easy answer, but nothing between me and Cardan has ever been easy. I gave him a crown he didn't want. He took away one that I did. There is never a settling of debts in Faerie, only the endless exchange of favors, the balances of who owes whom shifting like the Court's whims. Where does the balance lie for us? 

I reach out my hand, and he takes it. His fingers are delicate in mine, and I’m careful of his injuries as I pull him to his feet. When he sways, I catch him, holding him up. His arm wraps around my shoulder, warm in the evening chill. His face turns into my hair, and although I see him wrinkle his nose at the smell of the dye, he doesn’t turn away.

“I married you,” I say. “And I don’t wish it to be otherwise just yet.”

This time, when he smiles, I smile back.


End file.
